Work Text:
"Garak!" Julian yelled from the kitchen.
Garak, curious about the disruption, and what might have upset Julian, stuck his head out of the bedroom. "Yes?"
"Why is there a knife here?" Julian said, holding out a bloody hand. He stood by the sink, where Garak had just left a knife below the lip of the counter. He'd thought it quite a nice hiding spot, but decided he might need to rethink how he placed them if Julian was going to so easily injure himself.
"For protection, of course," Garak replied, resisting the urge to roll his eyes - a bad habit he'd picked up from Julian himself.
"No more knives, Garak," Julian said with a sigh. "This is the third time you've left one in a highly inconvenient place."
"I thought you'd noticed," Garak countered. "Aren't your augmented senses able to notice something like that?"
"Why not a disruptor?" Julian asked, avoiding the question. He quickly rinsed the blood off his hand and then reached for the cupboard with the dermal regenerator. He began to wave the device over the cut, reducing it to a think pink line, then making it disappear entirely.
"They need power," Garak sniffed. For an augment, he was sometimes shockingly dim. "A knife is far more efficient, especially for close quarters."
"Nobody is trying to kill us," Julian replied, looking up from his hand.
Garak gave him a look. Sometimes he wondered why he harboured such great affection for this man. "I'm allied with Alon Ghemor, and you're an alien. A Federation alien."
"I'm a doctor!" Julian protested. "Everyone knows I'm here to save lives!"
"A doctor who sleeps in my bed," Garak retorted. "A killer might mistake us."
Julian's cheeks darkened and far from the first time, Garak wished he actually had something to blush about.
"I'd wake up," he replied stubbornly.
Garak decided not to mention the amount of times he'd woken up in the middle of the night to escape to the bathroom, only for Julian to still be soundly asleep when he got back. "Perhaps," he acknowledged. "But I thought you'd understand it's best not to leave these things to chance."
"Fine," he said. "You can keep your knives, but only in the bedroom."
"I don't have to tell you where they are," Garak countered. "Except one, if you need it."
Julian rolled his eyes. "If that's what it'll take. to stop this madness."
Garak beamed. "I knew you'd see it my way."
//
Later that night, Garak organised the knives in the room, tucking the last one into the frame of the bed where he knew Julian would easily be able to reach it in an emergency. Julian might have told him it was a ridiculous quest, but he'd meant it when he said that there were people that might want him dead for his association with a member of the Cardassian Government, especially one allied with Castellan Ghemor.
Once he was done, Garak opened the door and Julian stuck his head in. "I hope they're not anywhere I'm going to step on in the middle of the night," he said.
"I know how to be careful," he said, and then pointed to the precise spot he'd hidden the last knife. "There it is."
Julian walked over to peer at the frame. "Huh," he said to himself, shrugged and then removed his shirt. Garak tried, and failed not to watch the action out of the corner of his eye. He sometimes wondered how he'd gotten so lucky as to have such a beautiful sleeping companion. More than anything, he wanted to reach out and touch, feel the smooth skin between his fingertips deliberately and appreciatively, with Julian begging for more. But such things would never happen, no matter how much he wanted them to.
They settled into bed together, and Garak tried to resist the urge to press himself against the doctor's warmth. It wasn't quite yet cool enough to have the excuse of freezing to take advantage of the doctor's warmth. In this post-Fire world, Cardassia's climate was strange and dreary, making winter nights practically unbearable without something (or someone able to generate their own body heat effectively) to keep him warm.
He thanked whatever gods were out there that he'd gotten so lucky to have Julian with him, even if it wasn't entirely the way he wanted. It felt greedy and indulgent, especially since he'd been offered larger quarters when they were available, and declined the request almost immediately. He couldn't help himself - he knew one day, Julian would leave and settle down with some lovely young Cardassian woman, but right now, he'd have the doctor for as long as he could.
Garak let himself indulge in the idea he could reach out across the space between them, closing the gap and kissing the doctor like he'd always wanted to. Julian would probably make a soft, surprised sound in the back of his throat but in Garak's fantasy, he'd only take a moment before he reached back, warm hands reaching -
"Are you asleep yet?" Julian asked, interrupting Garak's daydream. He felt momentarily guilty for thinking about his friend in such a way, but the intimacy they shared at night made him all kinds of sentimental.
"No," Garak replied. "Why?"
"Oh, I was just thinking," Julian said, then yawned quite abruptly.
"Perhaps you should sleep, not think," Garak said.
"I - okay, you might be right," Julian admitted, and Garak watched the human's eyes droop. "I just wanted to ask, if you're able to meet for lunch tomorrow."
"I can," Garak said, and made a mental note to adjust his lunchtime meetings. Prina would be mad, but like always, she'd make it work. If a lunch with Julian was on offer, all the diplomatic meetings in the world couldn't stop him from taking the opportunity.
"Good," Julian said, and yawned again. "I - ah - well. Tomorrow then..."
Garak smiled as Julian trailed off sleepily, his eyes growing heavier as he drifted off into sleep.
//
Every morning when he woke up, Julian did his best to try and calm himself down before Garak noticed how...excited his body was about their sleeping arrangements. Sharing a bed, he knew, was a bad idea, but the selfish part of him never wanted it to stop. Not while he could still have this.
Like always, Garak was still fast asleep, and somewhere in the night had pressed himself against Julian's chest, probably because the temperature had unexpectedly dropped sharply in the night. He knew he should probably be embarrassed about the fact he'd slept through Garak sleep-cuddling him again, but after that first winter together, it became so expected that his augmented brain had stopped waking him up. Garak would probably make fun of him if he knew.
Instead of getting up and making a detour to bathroom to relieve himself before he had to leave for work (an embarrassing habit that was becoming more and more common these days, another thing he tried hard not to think about too often), Julian lay there for just a moment longer, imagining for a moment a world in which this meant something. It was an impossible fantasy, but nonetheless his mind drifted back to it often in these moments, unable to stop himself from thinking about a Garak who wanted to hold him for more than just necessary warmth. He'd wake up too, see Julian there, and reach out and -
Garak made a sleepy noise, and Julian made himself go very still, keeping his breathing steady so the still-sleeping Cardassian wouldn't notice.
After a moment that somehow felt like forever, Julian finally got the strength to extract himself from Garak's desperate grasp. Thankfully, Garak didn't wake, though he made a sleepy, displeased noise that made Julian freeze in place again until he was sure Garak was definitely not waking up. Unable to help himself, Julian lingered by the door, again briefly indulging in the fantasy of this moment being real - that Garak's sleepy, disquiet noises were about missing him, and not the loss of extra body heat.
I wish this was real, he thought to himself as he quietly disappeared to the bathroom. He was probably going to be late (again) this morning if he didn't take care of...business quickly.